LaDonna Sanders Redmond said she didn't mean to become an advocate for food justice. Her son, who has many food allergies, needed healthy food. When she couldn't find what her family needed, she began to grow her own.

Redmond, the founder of Campaign for Food Justice Now, spoke at the Michigan Family Farms Conference at Marshall High School on Saturday. It was the first time the annual conference was held in Marshall.

Redmond, one of three keynote speakers, discussed how the food movement has unjustly affected people of color.

"I believe that food is a tool to use to organize people," Redmond said.

The conference is hosted by multiple organizations and coordinated by the Michigan Food and Farming Systems.

Michelle Napier-Dunnings, executive director of the organization, said about 400 people attended the conference this year.

Michigan Food and Farming Systems is an organization that supports beginning and under-served farmers to make small-scale farming attractive and viable for all people.

"Every point of the system affects every person on the planet," said Napier- Dunnings. "In order for a system to be fair and healthy it needs to have engagement from all people from a community that are part of that system."

Redmond shared her thoughts on inequities in the food system and how those inequities affected people of color on a large scale. She discussed the importance of soil and access to land, emphasizing who has access to it and who doesn't.

"Where I grew up it was easier to get a semi-automatic than a tomato," she said.

The motivational speaker has launched urban agriculture projects and worked on federal farm policies to expand nutritional food to low-income communities. Redmond was a W. K. Kellogg Food and Society Policy fellow from 2003 to 2005.

In one of her urban projects, Redmond assisted in turning an empty lot in a Chicago neighborhood into a garden and hired people from the community to work the land.

"When people put their hands in the soil they don't just reconnect for their work, they reconnect to who they are," Redmond said.

Redmond went on to say land and labor are the center of agriculture and that the current food system has exploited the narrative of people of color through white supremacy.

"When I say white supremacy in the food justice movement, it's this elite idea around food," she said. "One that certain populations don't know how to eat and don't want to eat better so that somebody's got to teach them."

Redmond received a standing ovation from the crowd – both from those who had heard her speak before and those who hadn't.

Alex Bryan, 30, said he had read about Redmond's work before joining the conference. Bryan represented the National Young Farmer's Coalition and the Lansing Food Bank. In his second year to the conference, Bryan said he wanted to talk to people about barriers young and beginning farmers face.

He said it's all part of the food justice and food sovereignty movement.

"Food justice I think is having the ability for food choice in a community," Bryan said. "Not just the access, not just the knowledge — being able to decide where your food comes from."

Redmond said not everyone has access and knowledge or the power to choose, and that's where the work should begin.

"There's only one food system and it feeds me and you and dogs and cats, too," she said. "And so whomever's food system is fragile, it means your food system is fragile too."

Call Olivia Lewis at 966-0581. Follow her on Twitter: @TheWrittenPeace